Cartoonist's job

When I saw Marc Murphy's cartoon on the Cumberland County incident, I expected there would be a flurry of angry letters threatening to cancel subscriptions and calling for Murphy's dismissal. Indeed, complaints of Murphy's "making fun" of a tragic situation abound.

Understanding is in order: Murphy is a satirist. Satirists serve a valuable function to society: they attempt to show us the folly of our ways. They remind us that the universe isn't kind and that life isn't fair - and they attempt to make us better people by pointing out our foibles in order to help us see issues from different vantage points, thus giving us pause to think - in depth -about life's perplexing absurdities.

A cartoon that is found on the editorial page, most likely, isn't supposed to be comically amusing; it is meant to be thought-provoking. If it provokes laughter, that's its cathartic effect. We all read Swift's "Modest Proposal" and were taught that Swift didn't really mean for us to consider eating the babies of the poor. Via tongue-in-cheek humor he prodded his reader to consider the situation of the poor. Was he cruel to "poke fun" at the poor? The object of Swift's treatise was not the poor; it was the insensitivity of his readers. He used humor to make his point rather than simple humiliation. If, along the way, someone was humiliated, that was a consequence of the reader's sudden awareness of his or her own callousness. Humiliation is a very effective teaching method; its lessons aren't soon forgotten.

Every action has a consequence, whether it is drawing or publishing a cartoon or buying a gun. If Murphy were to ignore the issues involved in the Cumberland County tragedy, he would be doing the community a disservice. The parents of the child who was killed would be no less devastated, their daughter would still be a victim of a tragic mistake, their son would still be destined to live under the cloud of the resultant tragedy - and on and on. The repercussions of calamities are myriad.

Murphy isn't trying to publicly humiliate this family or their community. He is attempting to help prevent a similar accident from happening again. That's his job.

GERI FRIDY

Louisville 40222

Injustice to Mahoney

I was shocked when I got my paper the day after Mother's Day. Larry Mahoney's picture plastered on the front page! I feel that it was a gross injustice to the man. He served his time as a model prisoner, remorseful for the tragedy he caused due to his drinking.

Where are the two people who contributed to this, the bartender and the friend? Both of them served him alcohol to the extent he was incapable of driving safely. I wonder how much remorse they felt.

No more Derby for them

My husband and I traveled to Louisville for this year's Derby and were very excited about being in your city. Imagine our surprise when we found the condition of our seating area.

With rows of people in front of us standing on the seats we saw only the start of the race, horses coming out of the gate, absolutely nothing more. While I realize that $350 was in the cheap seats, at least there could have been a big screen so that we could have seen something, or have been able to hear the announcer.

In the future, Louisville, keep your miserable accommodations. We'll watch it on TV.

JANIE MARKS

Hamilton, Texas 76531

No butts on bridge?

I noticed a billboard one morning stating, "Let future generations know the dangers of secondhand smoke."

At lunchtime I walked the bridge across the river where I met a man walking an empty wheelchair. He said he walked the bridge often, noticed some people overextended themselves, and used the wheelchair to help them. On the Indiana side, I saw two young ladies with a pet dog. When I asked if I could pet their dog, they were relieved I wasn't chastising them for having a pet. They didn't know about the pet ban as it was their first time on the bridge. The dog was on a leash and they had a plastic bag in case the dog did its thing.

I noticed there were many unsightly cigarette butts on the bridge. Perhaps authorities should also consider banning unhealthy people who may overextend themselves and smokers filling the air with unhealthy secondhand smoke and may throw their disgusting butts on the ground just as some inconsiderate dog owners don't clean up their mess.